Living wage protest hits McDonald’s in London.
Photograph: David Rowe/Demotix/Corbis

McDonald’s is offering UK staff on zero-hours contracts the option of moving to fixed hours in a major development in the debate about employee rights.

The fast food chain is one of the biggest users of the contracts in the country, with an estimated 80,000 workers on zero hours, which critics claim exploit workers.

Interview: McDonald's UK chief executive

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Paul Pomroy, the boss of McDonald’s UK, said the company was revamping its employment policy after staff told him they were struggling to get loans, mortgages and mobile phone contracts because they are not guaranteed employment each week.

As a result, the company has started offering staff the option of moving to contracts guaranteeing a minimum of four hours a week, 16 hours or 30 hours.

Pomroy said a trial in St Helens, Merseyside, had been very successful and McDonald’s is now looking to roll it out across the country.

About 80% of workers in the trial elected to stay on zero hours; of those who took up the fixed-hours option, three of five went for the maximum of 30 hours.

However, McDonald’s has been targeted by protesters over its treatment of workers. This week, campaigners from Fast Food Rights and Better Than Zero dressed as clowns and demonstrated outside a McDonald’s restaurant in Glasgow over its use of zero-hours contracts.

Pomroy, who became UK chief executive in February 2015, said McDonald’s was shifting its policy after feedback from a staff survey last September.

He told the Guardian: “In September, the feedback was that there is an element of people within our restaurants that did want to look at a more permanent set of hours. It was driven by the difficulty they were facing getting car loans, mobile phone contracts, mortgages.

“It was not that they weren’t getting the hours they wanted at McDonald’s, but as financial lending tightened it was becoming a real challenge.

“So we listened. We have just completed a first pilot test of moving to fully flexible hours. Interestingly in the test we have done, over 80% have stayed on zero because they want the full flexibility. If you speak to them they want to be able to up their hours when they are in school holidays and they want to be able to reduce when they’re studying. The same with mums.”

The trial in St Helens included 246 people, with 42 taking up the offer of fixed hours. The company plans to expand it to another six restaurants in London and the east Midlands from May, testing how it works in school holidays, before rolling out the new policy across the country from the end of the year. Once the national roll-out begins, it could take a year to be in every restaurant, partly due to technological upgrades required in the shift-scheduling system.

“It has definitely worked,” Pomroy said. “It has worked for [the staff], it has worked for us. For that group that want to get car loans or want to get mobile phone contracts or want to get mortgages, it’s important they can access them. It’s less about the hours they are doing. They are not doing any different hours, so their job doesn’t suddenly change. But the perception externally is they have got fixed contracted hours, and that enables them to unlock things.”

McDonald’s could evolve the proposals as they are rolled out, with a 40-hour contract potentially introduced.

Pomroy said a 40-hour option was not in the trial because staff, including managers “still want that flexibility at the top”.

He added: “It doesn’t mean there won’t be in the future, but we have worked with the managers and the staff to agree the hours. They have said ‘These are the patterns that we think work if you look across our restaurants’.”

Under the trial, staff are offered contracts in line with the average hours per week they work. New starters have to wait three months to be offered a fixed-hours contract.

“No one can choose their final hours until they have been with us three months, because that way they need to understand their pattern of work and how that works,” Pomroy said. “Then they sit down and agree – ‘OK since you have been with us for three months you have worked an average of 12 hours. Do you want to go to 16? Would you prefer 16? Or do you want to stay at four? Or do you want to go zero?”

Trade unions and the Institute of Directors welcomed the move. Seamus Nevin, head of employment and skills at the IoD, said: “While zero-hours contracts offer flexibility for many staff, like students or those with caring responsibilities, other workers would prefer to have the certainty of fixed hours. McDonald’s have taken a positive step by talking to staff about how the employment relationship can work best for both sides.

“Zero-hour contracts will continue to be a useful part of a flexible labour market, but we would encourage firms to engage with staff, and look at offering permanent contracts where appropriate.”

Steve Turner, Unite’s assistant general secretary, said: “On the face of it, this move by McDonald’s is a step in the right direction and shows the likes of Sports Direct that businesses can wean themselves off their addiction to insecure zero-hours contracts and give their staff the security of a permanent contract.

“Zero-hours contracts leave people not knowing from one week to the next whether they can feed their kids or pay bills and should have no place on Britain’s high streets. While the devil will be in the detail, this move by McDonalds suggests that the penny is finally dropping with some employers over the exploitative nature of zero hours contracts and the dissatisfaction they can breed among a workforce.”